Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada was a Spanish explorer and conquistador in Colombia. He explored the northern part of South America. While successful in many of his exploits, acquiring massive amounts of gold and emeralds, he ended his career disastrously; and has been suggested as a possible model for Cervantes' Don Quixote. He was a descendant of Henry the Navigator. His father was a hidalgo relative of Gonzalo Fransisco de Cordoba, and his mother was a descendant of El Cid. He has two known distant cousins: Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro. Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada was born in Cordova, Spain, into a Jewish family which had converted to Catholicism before he was born....

Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada was a Spanish explorer and conquistador in Colombia. He explored the northern part of South America. While successful in many of his exploits, acquiring massive amounts of gold and emeralds, he ended his career disastrously; and has been suggested as a possible model for Cervantes' Don Quixote. He was a descendant of Henry the Navigator. His father was a hidalgo relative of Gonzalo Fransisco de Cordoba, and his mother was a descendant of El Cid. He has two known distant cousins: Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro. Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada was born in Cordova, Spain, into a Jewish family which had converted to Catholicism before he was born....

Rodrigo (or Ruy) Díaz de Vivar, nicknamed El Cid Campeador, was a Castilian military and political leader in medieval Spain. Born of the minor nobility, El Cid was educated in the royal Castilian court and became an important general and administrato...

Henry the Navigator was an infante of the Kingdom of Portugal and an important figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire. He was responsible for the early development of European exploration and maritime trade with other continents.
Henry...

Francisco Pizarro was a Conquistador who seized the Inca empire for Spain. In 1510 he enrolled in an expedition of exploration in the New World, and three years later he joined Vasco Núñez de Balboa on the expedition that discovered the Pacific. He m...

Sebastián de Belalcázar was a Spanish conquistador. He took the name Belalcázar as that was the name of the castle-town near to his birthplace in Córdoba. According to various sources, he may have left for the New World with Christopher Columbus as e...

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in th...

Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor from 1519-1558; he was also King of Spain from 1516-1556, officially as Charles I of Spain, although often referred to as Charles V ("Carlos Quinto" or "Carlos V") in Spain and Latin America. He was the son of Philip...

Nikolaus Federmann was a German adventurer and conquistador in the colonies of Venezuela and Colombia. He worked in the service of the Welser brothers. Nikolaus Federmann was born in Ulm (Baden-Württemberg) around 1505. In 1529 he was sent to Santo D...

Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written. His influence on the...